Data archiving, as defined by a leading storage consulting company, Horison Strategies, is “a set of processes, activities and management of digital data over time to ensure its long term accessibility and security.” Archived data may be made up of information that is not changing and rarely needs to be accessed. As such, archived data may need to be “stored and ignored”—in many cases forever.
There are several continuing trends that may raise concerns for the management of archives in the near future including a continuing data explosion, the shelf life of magnetic tape, and the painful process of migrating archives. With respect to the continuing data explosion, according to the IDC's Digital Universe Study of June, 2011, the world's digital data is more than doubling every two years with approximately 1.8 zettabytes to be created, copied or replicated in 2011 and projected up to 7.9 zettabytes (1×1021) in 2015.
Next, with respect to the commonly used magnetic tape storage medium, the actual “useful life” of the magnetic tape is much shorter than its “shelf life”, which may impact the cost of ownership. For example, research cites that the 30-year shelf life is rarely used as a migration timeframe, and the Useful Life metric of 10 years is a consistent average and factors into migration cycles.
Lastly, the process of migrating archives is painful, even with advances in software automation tools. Furthermore, taking into consideration the above discussed trends, migration difficulties may increase faster than automation tool advancements.
Magnetic tape has long been the dominant media for archived digital data, providing optimal features and benefits in price, performance, and media longevity. However, it would be advantageous to employ another medium that can go much further to meet the “forever” requirement, and would minimize any archival costs for being inactive—including cyclical migration to new technologies, special vault environmental conditions, and zero ongoing energy costs.
Accordingly, embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to techniques of using stainless steel roll-film as an archiving medium.